7.8 /10 1 Votes
Originally published 1897 | 3.9/5 Goodreads | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Characters Harvey Cheyne, Captain Disko Troop, Dan Troop, Frank Burton Cheyne, Mrs. Cheyne Adaptations Captains Courageous (1937), Captains Courageous (1996) Similar Works by Rudyard Kipling, Classical Studies books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Captains Courageous is an 1897 novel, by Rudyard Kipling, that follows the adventures of fifteen-year-old Harvey Cheyne Jr., the spoiled son of a railroad tycoon, after he is saved from drowning by a Portuguese fisherman in the north Atlantic. The novel originally appeared as a serialisation in McClure's, beginning with the November 1896 edition. In 1900, in his essay “What We Can Expect of the American Boy,” Teddy Roosevelt extolled the book and praised Kipling for describing “in the liveliest way just what a boy should be and do.”
Contents
- Captains courageous full audiobook
- Plot
- Film TV theatrical or other adaptations
- Derivative usages
- References
The book's title comes from the ballad "Mary Ambree", which starts, "When captains courageous, whom death could not daunt". Kipling had previously used the same title for an article on businessmen as the new adventurers, published in The Times of 23 November 1892.
Captains courageous full audiobook
Plot
Protagonist Harvey Cheyne, Jr., is the son of a wealthy railroad magnate and his wife, in San Diego, California. Washed overboard from a transatlantic steamship and rescued by fishermen off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, Harvey can neither persuade them to take him quickly to port, nor convince them of his wealth. Disko Troop, captain of the schooner We're Here, offers him temporary membership in the crew until they return to port, and Harvey later accepts.
Through a series of trials and adventures, Harvey, with the help of the captain's son Dan Troop, becomes acclimated to the fishing lifestyle, and even skillful. Eventually, the schooner returns to port and Harvey wires his parents, who immediately hasten to Boston, Massachusetts, and thence to the fishing town of Gloucester to recover him. There, Harvey's mother rewards the seaman Manuel, who initially rescued her son; Harvey's father hires Dan to work on his prestigious tea clipper fleet; and Harvey goes to Stanford to prepare for taking over his father's shipping lines.
Film, TV, theatrical, or other adaptations
Captains Courageous has been adapted for film three times:
Musical theatre:
Other adaptations: